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Under the radar, and un-noticed by many climate scientists, there was a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), commissioned by the US Government, regarding climate change. Here is the remit under which they were supposed to operate:

Specifically, our charge was

1. To identify the principal premises on which our current understanding of the question [of the climate effects of CO2] is based,

2. To assess quantitatively the adequacy and uncertainty of our knowledge of these factors and processes, and

3. To summarize in concise and objective terms our best present understanding of the carbon dioxide/climate issue for the benefit of policymakers.

Now, that all sounds quite reasonable. In fact, if we knew the answers to those questions, we’d be a long ways ahead of where we are now.

Figure 1. The new Cray supercomputer called “Gaea”, which was recently installed at…

One day last year, Simple Plan’s Pierre Bouvier and Chuck Comeau were sitting in the recording studio trying to come up with lyrics for a track they planned to include on their new album, Get Your Heart On!. Not only did they want to write a song about the emotional power music can have in one’s life, they also wanted to capture the sentiment behind the thousands of pieces of mail the band receive at their Montreal headquarters each month from fans all over the world who write to express what Simple Plan’s music has meant to them. As Bouvier tells it: “These letters are pretty overwhelming and humbling at the same time so we wanted to somehow pay homage to those fans. We were sitting there going, ‘I don’t know, what do you think they would say?’ and Chuck says, ‘Why don’t we just ask them?'” The following message was posted on Comeau’s Twitter feed: “We decided to write a song about you guys…Can you tell me how our music has made you feel through the years?”

“Within seconds, the responses started coming in,” Comeau recalls, still marveling at the moment. “It was a deluge, like a hurricane of answers.” Based on those Tweets, Bouvier and Comeau constructed what is perhaps the first song ever written entirely via Twitter: the poignant album closer “This Song Saved My Life.” “Every word is taken from the hundreds of messages we got from our fans,” Comeau says. It’s a tribute to these loyal souls (25 of whom showed up from all over the world at a studio in Vancouver to sing on the track after the band tweeted an invite) who have faithfully followed the Canadian quintet since its inception in 1999, through three studio albums, two live albums, and tours to nearly every corner of the globe, including visits to Russia, Israel, Poland, Jakarta, Estonia, South Africa, and The Philippines, as well as extensive sold-out headlining tours of the U.S. and their native Canada.